January 20th, 2010 by Shadowfax in Better Health Network, True Stories
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The ER is a highly effective bottom-filter for society. When you work in the ER you are in daily contact with the worst that mankind has to offer: addicts, sociopaths, criminals, and the many many varieties of personality disorders with which a loving God has imbued humanity. I say this not as condemnation: they are my people. I know them and accept them for who they are. I am here every day to serve them in their various needs, from the heroin addict who is dropped off blue and apneic to the homeless guy who just wants his unwashed feet looked at.
One of the refreshing features of many members of the lumpenproletariat is their candor regarding their habits. Sure, it’s by no means universal, but it’s entirely common for me to ask someone quite directly: “Do you use meth?” and have the patient respond in the affirmative and without the least trace of self-consciousness expand on the degree and nature of their drug use. The hardest question for me to learn to ask without blushing was “do you ever have sex for money or drugs?” (And yes, I do ask that of both men and women, when it seems potentially relevant.) But people on occasion forthrightly admit that they turn the odd trick to support their habit. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Movin' Meat*
January 12th, 2010 by Shadowfax in Better Health Network, True Stories
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Exaggeration, drama, and histrionics are very much the rule of thumb in the ER. Someone comes in and claims they were stabbed with an eight-inch butcher’s knife, and the police later bring in the actual weapon, and it turns out to be a three-inch penknife. Someone claims to have taken a whole bottle of tylenol, but their serum levels turn out to be nowhere near the toxic level (or even zero). A patient reports to you that their last pneumonia was so bad their doctor didn’t think they’d pull through, but you check the records and see they weren’t even in the ICU. (The sole exception to this rule, of course, is the stated alcohol intake, which is usually about half to a third the actual alcohol intake.) Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Movin' Meat*
December 23rd, 2009 by Shadowfax in Better Health Network, True Stories
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I’ve not been blogging much lately because of work craziness and traveling. One of my recent travels, however, was not for work but for pleasure. I’ve been studying karate (a traditional Okinawan version called Shorin-Ryu) for over fifteen years. There’s a national federation to which I belong and there are seminars three or four times a year taught by some of our more senior instructors. This was one such seminar, and it focused on joint lock and grappling techniques, some of which our style shares in common with other martial arts such as Akido and Judo.
At one point I was working with a fifth-degree black belt instructor, “Bill.” Super nice guy, and absolutely amazing in his speed and techniques. He was also very kind in teaching me a number of useful tricks and nuances of the techniques we were working on. There was a sequence which culminated in a choke-hold, and he was unhappy with the manner in which I was choking him. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Movin' Meat*
December 15th, 2009 by Shadowfax in Better Health Network, Humor, True Stories
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They’re not allowed to actually write “Hey Dummy, look here” on the x-ray report, but this is what the radiologists do when they want to make sure the idiots in the ER won’t miss the key finding on a film (in this case, a bit of glass from an automobile window):
The wonders of digital radiography allow this to appear on my computer screen. In the old days they did it with a grease pencil and a post-it note.
*This blog post was originally published at Movin' Meat*
December 6th, 2009 by Shadowfax in Better Health Network, True Stories
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Crummy shift the other night: 23 patients in eight hours, and 21 of them were painful. For me, that is, not necessarily for the patients. Lots of worried well, influenza, some minor injuries and a few chronic pain players. Not a single sick one in the lot. One particularly irksome case was a chronic pain patient dumped on our ER from a neighboring ER, complete with discharge instructions reading “Go to (name of our hospital).” So by the end of my shift I was pretty well burnt out. But the last two patients put an interesting perspective on the night.
The first was a 99 year-old man. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Movin' Meat*
